


Some Kind of Radar System (Locked in on Love)

by tigerlily_sunshine



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexuality, Insecurity, M/M, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlily_sunshine/pseuds/tigerlily_sunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you, Cal. Every single part of you. I love you, and that’s not going to change. Ever. No matter what you do. I will always love you.”</p>
<p>Calum chokes out a laugh that may, instead, be a sob. Ashton sneaks his hands underneath Calum’s armpits so that he can draw Calum into a hug, one that is even tighter than the hold Calum himself has on Ashton. </p>
<p>“That’s what they all say, but nobody ever means it.”</p>
<p>(In which Ashton is head over heels in love with Calum, but Calum has a secret that could break them.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Kind of Radar System (Locked in on Love)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Storm Warning" by Hunter Hayes.

**_Now_ **

It happens the first time they’re naked together. Ashton is really getting into it, focused on nothing except for their impending mutual release, when Calum stops him. Ashton is running his hands along sweat-slicked skin, lower and lower to his destination, but Calum’s fingers wrap one-by-one around his wrist. Ashton freezes, looking up from their bodies pressed together to his partner’s deep brown eyes.

“I—I don’t—”

Calum looks so young, biting his lips together as his eyes shine with uncertainty. It’s like he desperately wants to say whatever is on his mind—that this is something important—but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to interrupt this moment. Ashton pushes back his own desire for release. He cups Calum’s cheek and leans forward to press a soft, chaste kiss against his lips like they’re not both as naked as the days they each were born.

 “I can’t do this,” says Calum rushed in one breath.

He pulls away from Ashton, sitting back on his butt in the mountain of pillows that Ashton insists on keeping at the head of his bed. He reaches for the sheet twisted in a mess on one side of the mattress. He drapes it across his waist, a white flag of surrender.

“It’s too fast, isn’t it?” asks Ashton.

He wilts where it matters, but he makes no move to cover up his nakedness. He’s never been ashamed of his body, not even in the face such rejection as this. He leans back on his hands to make himself more comfortable. Without Calum to lean against, he is dangerously prone to falling off the edge of the mattress.

They hadn’t actually planned to end up in bed together tonight. It was just the natural progression of the evening. A nice home-cooked meal and a bottle of the finest wine in Ashton’s wine rack had led to a passionate bout of making out like love-virgin teenagers on the couch. Somewhere in between chapped lips and the loss of the last article of clothing between them, they had ended up in Ashton’s bedroom. Calum had given no indication that he was on a different page than Ashton, and Ashton had looked closely for any signs that they should stop. There had been none until Calum’s hand had encircled Ashton’s wrists, an inch of skin bare between his thumb and first finger.

“I—I need to go.”

Calum leaps from the bed, and the white sheet billows to the floor. He tornados around the room, searching for his discarded clothes. He up-ends most of Ashton’s carefully folded stacks of laundry that has yet to be put away. Ashton doesn’t say anything, just stares at the hurricane of a man in a hurry for the door.

The temperature in the room drops drastically. Goosebumps spread like wildfire across Ashton’s skin. An invisible hand squeezes his windpipe. He thinks faintly of his inhaler stuffed in the back of the drawer in his bedside table, but his limbs aren’t cooperating well enough to even move from his spot in the middle of the bed.

Calum doesn’t lace up his shoes. He doesn’t even look at Ashton. He’s dressed now, mostly. His socks are balled up in his hands, and he’s given up looking for the t-shirt he had worn and is instead just wearing his hoodie. He hovers by the door, his back to Ashton. His hand trembles around the handle.

For a moment, Ashton thinks he’s going to say something. He doesn’t. He slips from the bedroom, and the click of front door latch announces his final departure.

Ashton flops back on his bed, still naked, and stares up at the ceiling. He doesn’t think about the churning sensation in his stomach or the constriction of his airway. His inhaler is too far away, and it’s not really an asthma attack anyway. He hasn’t had one of those in years. He doesn’t really think heartache or even the humiliation of still being naked really counts as an attack.

It’s more likely that he’s just pathetic.

 

**_Then_ **

Ashton is running late, and, yeah, that’s okay, except that today is probably the biggest day of his life so far. Or, at the very least, of his career. He’s twenty-six years old and interviewing the mayor of the city for a write up in the paper about the new programs for school-aged children designed to reduce hunger and homelessness. Ashton likes kids, and he voted for the mayor in the last election, and he’s still only halfway through his twenties, only two years into this career, and he thinks he might hyperventilate if he takes another moment to assess the day set before him.

The bus is crowded. It figures, really, given the state of Ashton’s morning. He’s surprised the bus has even run its route today, let alone that he’s actually standing on it. He doesn’t ride the bus every day. He does own a car, after all, but his car is in the shop getting new brake pads put on it. He had finally gotten tired of hearing the loud, squealing sound every time he tapped the brake pedal and of the awful sensation of the pit of his stomach dropping in fear that he might not stop this time.  

There are a few familiar faces. A couple of them offer him greetings. All of them are already sitting two to a seat or otherwise surrounded by people. Ashton is already regretting the bagel he ate in three bites on his dash to the bus stop. It’s rolling around in his stomach, mixing in with the panic buzzing through his body at the idea of interviewing the mayor. He doesn’t think he can handle making pointless small talk with half of a dozen strangers. 

At the back of the bus, there’s an empty space next to a handsome man. The stranger is obviously a few years younger than him, if the straps to his book bag are any indication that he’s not even an university graduate yet. He’s got a head full of soft-looking black hair and a smile that, though drenched in socially expected niceties, lights up his whole face.

Ashton sits down next to him and tries not to feel like a giant. He goes to the gym four times a week and watches what he puts into his body—he’s beginning to reach that age where he has to keep a good eye on his eating habits and exercising habits and drinking habits and all of the habits in between—so he’s in pretty good shape. He glances at the stranger’s hand tapping an unfamiliar pattern on the knees of his well-worn blue jeans, and he notices how small the man’s hands are compared to his, notices how dark the man’s skin is compared to his. His breath catches in his throat.

 Ashton doesn’t want to admit to himself how long it has been since he has found another person attractive, especially not on a day like this one where he is already late for work and he is supposed to interview the mayor. The setting is all wrong for the thoughts that threaten to enter his head. The sun is shining, for one, and he’s hundreds of miles away from the nearest sea port. The last part is really all that matters. He’s pretty sure it was sunny three years ago when he got the news, too.

“Big day?” asks the stranger next to him with the tiny hands and well-worn jeans. His smile has faded, because there is no use in being overly friendly at such an early hour on a Wednesday. He is looking at Ashton instead of out the window, so it isn’t too much of a loss. His eyes are big and wide and so, so brown.

“That obvious?”

The bus is speeding down the city street, stopping at every stoplight that turns red, and taking Ashton closer and closer to the office. He’s so late that he’s ceased to care what time it is. He’s never been good at being on time anyway. He texted Remy when he left his apartment to let her know that he was late. She sent back a string of green apple emojis, so he thinks he is good with her and, therefore, the boss. It is only the biggest day of Ashton’s life. Surely he can be forgiven just this once.

“You’ve been picking at the same string on your shirt sleeve since you sat down—longer than, probably,” answers the stranger, and Ashton blinks at him, because nobody has ever paid that much attention to him before. The stranger seems to realize how odd of an observation that had been, because he blushes to the tips of his ears. “Sorry, I, uh, have a long commute.”

“’M interviewing the mayor today,” says Ashton, choosing to explain his nervousness. He could use the distraction of talking about his problems rather than becoming trapped by the endless mantra in his head. He purposefully stops fiddling with the frayed edge of his shirt sleeve. This stranger seems nice enough. “I’m fifteen fucking minutes late, and I think I might vomit back up my bagel.”

The stranger makes a disgusted face, top lip curled up in a manner that really should not be so attractive this early on a Wednesday morning. Ashton can’t really blame him for such a response, really, because the idea of seeing his hastily chewed bagel mixed with bile does not sound very appetizing to himself, either. It is definitely not something that a total stranger would expect to discuss during the morning commute. Ashton really needs to reevaluate how he interacts with other people.

“Need me to cause a distraction? Like yell fire or something? Get everybody looking the other direction while you vomit out the window? I’ll even switch you seats.”

Ashton laughs, but the stranger looks so sincere that Ashton almost doubts he meant to be funny. The thought of this stranger actually standing up right now and yelling _fire!_ does funny things to Ashton’s heart. Makes it skip a beat. Or two. Or possibly altogether.

It has been entirely too long since Ashton has ever felt so flustered over a complete stranger. Or anybody, really.

“Do these windows even open?” he asks.

The stranger shrugs. “Don’t think so, but, hey, it was an idea?”

“I appreciate it, man,” he says, and he actually means it. “I’m Ashton, by the way.”

“Calum.”

And that’s how they met. Eight months ago on their morning commute. Cheesy like in the movies—except in the movies, the protagonist definitely does not get chewed out by his boss right in front of the mayor for being half of an hour late to the interview.

It could be worse, though. The interview ends up going well, and Ashton has a brand new number stored away in his phone. It’s the biggest day of Ashton’s life.

 

**_Now_ **

Calum doesn’t return any of Ashton’s calls. It has been three days. This is the longest they have gone without talking to one another, and Ashton is slowly going insane. He dials the number again. It rings four times before the voicemail picks up.

_“Hey, it’s Cal. Leave me a message or whatever.”_

Ashton doesn’t leave a message. He has already left five. He hangs up instead, and he tosses his phone on the table in front of him. It clatters loudly across the vinyl table top. Some of the other patrons of the diner glance his way. He probably looks pathetic, like a man who is being stood up for date, but he doesn’t care.

He kind of feels like he’s being stood up.

Michael sits down across from him in the booth and scoots in. A second later, Luke sits down beside him. Ashton hardly looks up at them, his eyes glued to his phone as if he can make it ring by his willpower alone. It doesn’t ring.

“You look like hell,” says Michael, blunt.

Ashton snorts. It’s not like he doesn’t already know that. He has spent the past seventy-two hours attached to his phone, calling Calum. Desperate to talk to Calum. To fix whatever it is that has broken between them. That is his main priority—Calum. Ashton hasn’t cared about much else beyond Calum for the past eight months. He’s not about to start now.

“Seriously, Ash, have you—uh, have you _bathed_ recently?” asks Luke

His voice is a touch hesitant but saturated with concern that makes Ashton’s toes curl. It’s not like Luke doesn’t have the right to be worried about Ashton. They have been friends forever, practically, but Ashton thinks he’s been doing well, considering the fact that his world revolves so heavily around Calum and he hasn’t spoken to Calum since the man hurricaned out of his bedroom the other night.

Yes, Ashton has bathed. Probably. He’s sure he’s stepped into the shower at least once in the interim period between Calum’s departure and right now. Surely he has, because he has gone into work to put in his time, and he’s been operating off muscle memory, and Remy hasn’t commented on his hygiene like the germaphobe she is.  

“I don’t understand what happened,” says Ashton, ignoring Luke’s question. He finally looks up at Luke, sees Luke worrying with his lip ring, and Luke looks almost as lost as Ashton feels. “We were—I thought—I mean, I _love_ him, and I thought he—well, he has to feel the same, too, doesn’t he?”

“Cal loves you,” says Luke without hesitation.

He is so calm and collected and so sure of himself like he is of everything in life, it seems, that Ashton wants to believe him instantly. He doesn’t, because he sees the way Michael stiffens next to Luke, like Michael himself knows something neither Luke nor Ashton does.

It would be a quite a feat if that were true. Ashton, Luke, Michael, and Calum basically live in each others’ pockets. Michael and Calum go way back, all the way to grade school, and Ashton and Luke have been friends forever, so it was only natural that once Ashton and Calum started dating that they had to meet each other’s best friend. Michael and Luke had to approve of their relationship. Looking back on it, Ashton supposes it was only natural that Luke and Michael fell in love, too. Ashton loves Calum, and he trusts Calum, and Calum says that Michael is a great man, and Ashton wouldn’t want any less for Luke.

Michael runs his hand through his dyed red hair. One of his many rings gets caught in some of the strands, and they stick straight up when he drops hand back to the table in front of him. Ashton watches the entire movement with a sinking feeling in his chest. He knows what that gesture means. Michael always runs a hand through his hair whenever he has a secret that he knows is going to fuck something up. In this case, Ashton fears he and Calum might be the thing that gets fucked up.

“Mike, tell me what you know,” says Ashton.

He is more forceful about it than he means to be. He is almost downright _rude_ , and Ashton makes it a habit not to be mean to Michael, because Michael is Calum’s best friend. No matter how often Michael can be too much to handle, Calum loves him at the end of the day, so Ashton does, too. Michael is something like precious to Calum and to Ashton and definitely to Luke. Usually, Ashton is nothing less than nice to him.

“I can’t,” says Michael.

Ashton opens his mouth to say that he _can_ , that there shouldn’t be secrets between them. They’re all friends here—more than in some cases. Michael says he can’t do things all the time. He can’t get up from the couch to get the pizza whenever the delivery man rings the doorbell. He can’t watch a movie without giving a running commentary on it. He can’t kiss somebody unless he’s in bed with them.

But Ashton knows all of Michael’s _can’t_ s are actually _can_ s. Ashton has seen him leap up from the couch, right in the middle of a _FIFA_ game nonetheless, to get the pizza after Luke asked him to. Ashton has seen Michael watch a movie all curled up against Luke and not speak a single word the entire time. Mostly, Ashton has seen the way Michael kisses Luke—all of the time, as often as he can, regardless of his chances to get into Luke’s pants.

“You _can_.”

“I can’t,” repeats Michael, bullheaded like he is only when it comes to Calum, and that makes Ashton’s heart sink even more. Michael chews on his bottom lip, a habit that he’s picked up from Luke, and he stares at Ashton, his eyes big and so, so green. When he speaks again, it’s a slow drawl. Every word is thick with purposeful enunciation. “You should talk to Calum. It’s his secret to tell. Just… Just treat him well, okay? Even if—I mean, you’d better treat him well, or I will castrate you with a rusty spoon and then feed you your balls on a wooden stake.”

Ashton doesn’t doubt that Michael will do exactly that.

 

**_Then_ **

Falling in love with Calum should be scary. It is new territory. Ashton hasn’t let himself fall for another person in so long of a time that he has almost forgotten what it feels like to have an army of butterflies wage a war in his stomach. Ashton equates love with the ocean, with the mighty beast that swallows everything up. He has drowned in love before, and he should be terrified that he might again.

But somewhere between phone calls that last late into the night and _good morning!_ text messages that are waiting on his phone every time he wakes up, Ashton falls in love in a matter of weeks. He’s not afraid at all.

It’s fast. A whirl wind. Calum takes him on wild dates. To the carnival in town when it’s set up and the entry fee is two dollars per person. To live bands on Thursday nights at his favorite café where the coffees are half-priced as long as there is somebody on stage plucking away at an acoustic guitar. To karaoke nights at the university bar where the two of them make fools of themselves singing along to Green Day and Blink-182.

Calum doesn’t have a lot of money. He doesn’t have a lot of free time, either. Both are the products of his last year at university.

He’s studying to be a music teacher, he tells Ashton quietly over their second real-date. They have gone to a kind of fancy restaurant, and Ashton is going to pay this time. Calum still orders the cheapest thing on the menu—a cheeseburger that has more vegetables on it than a burger really should. Calum has ketchup in the corner of his mouth, and he blushes so prettily when he admits that all he really wants to do is play music for the rest of his life. Ashton hasn’t heard him play anything, but he knows without a doubt that Calum is amazing at music. The fiery passion in his eyes is enough of a testament of that.

Ashton tells Calum things that he hasn’t had the balls to admit to Luke yet, and they’ve barely known each other for two months at this point. He tells Calum all about how he’d fallen in love before and about how the ocean had stolen his lover right from him. He tells Calum that he can hardly handle a tub full of water without freaking out. He doesn’t love his dead lover anymore, not like he did when their love was brand new. He can’t, really, because that man is dead, and Ashton can’t spend his life in love with a dead man.

He tells Calum all of this and then some, and he’s so, so afraid that by talking about his history of lovers—or rather about _the_ lover in his history—that he’s scaring Calum off. Nobody wants to hear about their partner’s former lovers, let alone on the second date.

But Calum is different. He’s so different from all of the men that Ashton has slept with over the past three years that Ashton can only stare at Calum in awe, almost unable to believe such a perfect specimen of a human being is alive right here before him. He doesn’t cringe away from Ashton’s past like everybody before him has. He takes Ashton’s hands in his, and he asks, voice soft and full of so much love that it steals the very breath from Ashton’s lungs, _why don’t you tell me about him?_

It takes a couple of tries, but Ashton does. Somehow, Calum recognizes that this what Ashton needs. That Ashton has to talk about his dead lover in order to truly move on, in order to pursue this relationship with Calum without feeling like he’s trapped in a web of lies. The thing is, Ashton’s dead lover is a part of Ashton himself, and Ashton wants to give his entirety to Calum, if Calum would like to have it.

Calum, in fact, would like to have it. Ashton’s entirety. He listens as Ashton talks about his past, about the lover, a marine biologist with a thirst for the sea, who sailed off on a ship one day and never came back. Alive, that is. Calum listens as Ashton talks about getting the news that a research ship had exploded and sank, some one hundred miles off the coast of Florida. That everybody on board had perished. 

In the end, there is nothing left to say about his dead lover other than: _and I swore to myself that I’d never fall in love again—but that’s a total lie. I’m falling in love with you._

It’s not really how Ashton had intended this conversation to go, but it’s true nonetheless. He’s known Calum for seven and a half weeks—for fifty-two days, ten hours, and twenty-three minutes and counting—so he shouldn’t be as utterly gone for Calum as he is. But Ashton has never really cared for societal expectations. He’s in love with Calum, dammit, and he’s not going to wait around until it’s socially acceptable to tell him. Not when there is so much at stake.

Not when Calum is grinning so widely back at him and saying, _I thought I was the only one. Fuck. I love you, Ash_ , and leaning across the table and kissing him with all his might. Calum tastes like ketchup. The angle horrible. Ashton’s certain he’s got pasta sauce from his baked spaghetti all up the front of his shirt now, but he doesn’t care. He kisses Calum back like his life depends on it—because it kind of does.

Calum is his life. 

 

**_Now_ **

Ashton stops by Calum’s place on the way home from work the next day. Nobody is at home. Or, at least, nobody comes to do the door. That is nothing unusual. His house calls have gone unanswered all week. Ashton trudges back down the steps and all the way down the sidewalk to his car feeling like the weight of entire world is on his shoulders.

He drives home on auto-pilot, making the turns and stopping at the lights only out of force of habit. He is probably in no state to drive, but he makes it home in one piece. He parks in front of his apartment building. It’s a short walk to his door and an even shorter one up the steps to his apartment.

He freezes on the last step, hardly able to believe his eyes. Surely, he has slipped into some type of mind-saving delusion, his brain’s way of ensure he doesn’t go completely insane over the absence of Calum from his life over the last few days. He pinches his thigh to make sure he’s not lost his mind. The pinch hurts in the best of ways, proves this is _real_. He drops his keys on the banister next to him. They clatter loudly, and the person sitting on his couch jumps, startled, though he’d been staring right back at Ashton this entire time.

“Hi,” says Calum, a full ninety-six or so hours after he’d last spoken to Ashton. After he’d stormed out of this apartment like he was on fire. He stands up, rigid, his shoulders tense. His hair is sticking straight up on his head, what is left of it at least, and Ashton knows Calum has spent the last however long running his hands through it in the nervous tick he picked up from Michael.

“Hi,” echoes Ashton, at a loss for what else to say. A part of him is still not completely convinced that he’s not dreaming—that he’s not still in the middle of a daydream in his car speeding dangerously down the street.

But this… This feels too real for it to be an illusion.

Calum looks awful, but Ashton still thinks he is the most beautiful thing in the entire world. There are bags underneath his eyes and worry lines along his forehead. He looks like he is right in the middle of a finals week, like there should be a pencil tucked behind his ear right now and an extra-large cup of steaming black coffee clutched in his fist. His clothes are wrinkled as if he has slept in them. Ashton notes, with a dull twinge of something akin to pride, that Calum is wearing Ashton’s old university sweatshirt. It is too big for him and allows him to curl his hands underneath the hem of the sleeves in a manner that Ashton finds entirely too adorable.

“Michael said you were… _Jeez_ , Ash. Michael said you looked so lost, but I didn’t imagine you looked—c’mere. Please, c’mere and let me hug you.”

Calum sounds like he might cry, and Ashton feels like he might, too. He has missed Calum so, so much. He doesn’t understand, still, why things got so bad between them all of a sudden that Calum spent _four_ _days_ away from him, but it doesn’t matter right now. Calum is here, and he has his arms stretched wide for Ashton to just walk into, so Ashton does. Calum curls his arms around Ashton, holds him like he belongs there—because he really does. Ashton lays his head on Calum’s shoulder. He draws in a shaky breath and lets it out slowly. He feels better than he has in days.

“I got scared, Ash,” murmurs Calum. He keeps one arm firm around Ashton’s torso, still holding him close, but he runs his free hand up and down Ashton’s back like Ashton likes so much. “I should have told you a long time ago—that time at that fancy restaurant you took me to on our second date, probably—but I didn’t want to scare you away.”

Ashton’s chest tightens at the idea that Calum could ever think Ashton would ever leave him. Ashton is head over heels in love with Calum and then some. These past few days have been hell without him. He couldn’t imagine an entire lifetime without Calum.

“I love you, Cal. Every single part of you, I love you, and that’s not going to change. Ever. No matter what you do. I will always love you.”

Calum chokes out a laugh that may, instead, be a sob. Ashton sneaks his hands underneath Calum’s armpits so that he can draw Calum into a hug, one that is even tighter than the hold Calum himself has on Ashton.

“That’s what they all say, but nobody ever means it.”

Ashton hugs him even tighter, and he doesn’t even care that Calum can probably barely breathe now. Calum never talks about his former lovers, not like Ashton has. What little Ashton does know about the men who came before him isn’t good, especially given the pinched look that crosses Calum’s face when the rare subject comes up and the dark, murderous tone that Michael’s voice takes on whenever he talks about the bastards who have broken Calum’s heart over and over and over again.

“I do. I mean it. I love you.”

“I can’t have sex with you,” says Calum, spitting the words out so fast that he nearly trips over them in his haste. “Ever. I don’t—I mean, that’s why I freaked out the other night. I don’t have an interest in sex. At all. But I wanted to for you, because you seemed like you wanted it so much, and I tried, but I couldn’t go through with it. I… I didn’t want you to hate me, so I left. I couldn’t face you. I was afraid you’d be mad.”

Ashton lets go of Calum and pushes him back. Calum tenses, initially, but allows the distance between them. His hands fall useless at his sides. He curls into himself, slouching his shoulders like he’s trying to make himself small enough to disappear. He doesn’t duck his head, though, for which Ashton is glad. He just stares straight ahead at a fixed point somewhere above Ashton’s left shoulder.

“I’ll have Michael get my stuff in a few days,” says Calum. His voice is thick. There are tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to spill down his cheeks. He holds them back. He has his pride, and that is one of the reasons Ashton fell so unbelievably in love with him. “Or—or Luke, whichever one you’d rather come by to get it.”

“I don’t want either of them to.”

“Oh.” Calum blinks. It causes the first tear to slip down his cheek. “Then I’ll, um… If you give me a few minutes, I think I know where most of my—”

“I love you, Calum,” says Ashton. He should have said it immediately in the aftermath of Calum’s confession. “I don’t care that you don’t want sex. I fell in love with you, not your dick, so I’m not going to lose the best thing that has ever happened to me just because we can’t have sex with one another.”

“It’s not something that is going to change, though. I’m not magically going to want sex six months from now when your balls are so blue they might as well belong to a Smurf.”

“Let me worry about my balls, all right?” suggests Ashton, grinning cheekily at Calum. It earns him a small smile that is gone almost immediately. Ashton’s own grin fades in the next second, the humor giving away to seriousness once more. “I’m quite fond of masturbating, you know. I’m perfectly capable of whacking one off in my morning shower if I should feel the need. It worked well when I was a teenager, and it was satisfactory before I met you, and I can live with it again.”

“But other people can—”

“I don’t care what other people can do,” says Ashton. It’s true. He wouldn’t even care if there was somebody else out there who could give him the greatest orgasm in the entire history of orgasms. They’re still nothing compared to Calum. “It’s not your job to get me off, and it’s especially not your job to get me off if you don’t want to do it.”

“It’s not you, Ash. It’s—”

“Don’t you dare say _it’s not you, it’s me_ , because, dammit, you don’t have to rationalize this to me. You don’t want sex, plain and simple. I don’t care. I still want you—and I’m going to still want you when we’re old and senile and I forget to button up my pants after I take a whizz.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t be intimate with you.”

Ashton sighs sadly. The sound makes Calum curl in on himself even more, which absolutely tears Ashton’s heart to shreds. He steps forward to bridge the distance between them once more. He places his hands on each of Calum’s shoulders, rubbing his thumbs around in comforting circles. He waits until Calum’s eyes meet his.

“That’s a lie. I’ve been more intimate with you than I’ve ever been with anybody I’ve slept with. You cuddle me in the bed at night right before we go to sleep, and you whisper that you love me right into my ear like it’s the worst-kept secret in the entire world. You share your popcorn with me whenever we watch movies over at Luke and Michael’s even though you tell me to get my own. You write—fucking _hell_ —Cal, you write _love songs_ for me, and you play them on your beaten-up guitar, and, I swear, my entire body goes weak for you at the sound of your voice. That’s intimacy, Cal. That’s you and me, together. That’s love, and that’s intimacy, and that has _nothing_ to do with sex.”

Calum sniffles, and he chokes back a sob. His eyes are red with tears. His cheeks are wet now with the few that he has let fall. Ashton cups Calum’s face, and he brushes away the newest tear that dares to trail down his cheek. Calum leans into Ashton’s hand. He closes his eyes like he’s afraid that this is a dream. Like he’s afraid he’s going to wake up.

“I love you, Calum, and I don’t care that you don’t want sex,” says Ashton, softly. He repeats himself a couple of more times just to make sure that Calum hears the words. Knows the truth in them. “What I do care about is the fact that you didn’t tell me you were uncomfortable the other night. Hell, I would have stopped as soon as you told me to, and I wouldn’t have cared at all. What’s important is that you are fine with what we do. Always. You weren’t then, and I don’t want you to ever do something that you don’t want to just because you think I want you to. I want you to do whatever you feel comfortable doing and nothing more.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” says Ashton. He leans forward and presses their lips together, a soft brush of a kiss that makes Ashton instantly weak at the knees. He pulls back enough to look into Calum’s eyes, and he rests his forehead against Calum’s. “Just promise me you’ll tell me if I ever do something to make you uncomfortable.”

“I promise,” says Calum. He leans in for another kiss, but right before their lips meet, he adds, “I love you, too.”

He kisses him like he means it, and Ashton kisses back. It’s the type of a kiss that should lead to something more. It doesn’t. Calum doesn’t want that, and Ashton wants what Calum wants. Always.

Ashton gently moves the both of them to the couch where they can be comfortable as they suck each other’s faces like their love-struck teenagers falling in love for the first time. Ashton lies down on his back and lets Calum take lead, trusting Calum to set the pace.

He’ll give Calum whatever Calum wants, because Ashton himself has Calum, and that’s all he’ll ever want. It’s that simple.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://tigerlily-sunshine.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The specific tag for this fic on my tumblr is [here](http://tigerlily-sunshine.tumblr.com/tagged/Some-Kind-of-Radar-System-%28Locked-in-on-Love%29).


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